Press Release

Digital Marketing Trends: AI Automation, Multimodal Search, and Dynamic Cross-Channel Attribution

In 2026, advertisers will face the challenge of balancing two opposing forces: exponential automation and genuine human connection, combined with new ways to reach customers.

Zurich and Berlin, December 17, 2025 – The most successful brands will combine the scale of AI with real human insight. Rather than choosing between automation and authenticity, marketing teams will use both to create relevance and earn trust. Brands that adopt attribution-, authenticity-, and intent-driven strategies will shape the next era of performance marketing. In this environment, “premium” will be defined by authenticity, proximity, and verified content. Experts at marketing analytics company Nexoya identify the following trends as shaping the industry:

1. AI evolves from a tool to an ecosystem. AI-generated platforms and information are spreading rapidly, yet human interaction remains the foundation of authenticity. The trend points toward a hybrid advertising world where trust becomes the key differentiator. Transparency will be critical to performance.

2. Search becomes multimodal. AI-driven results are shifting from keyword-based inputs to conversational queries. At the same time, regional inaccuracies in GEO, SEA, and SEO will be resolved. Advertisers will optimize campaigns for moments, location-based intent, and conversational responses.

3. Cross-channel attribution. In the post-cookie era, traditional multi-touch attribution has reached its limits. Forward-thinking companies will rely on hybrid models combining marketing mix modeling (MMM) for long-term measurement with regression-based digital attribution and weekly experiments for short-term insights.

Trend 1 – The Hybrid Advertising Landscape: AI-Generated Networks Expand, While Human Interaction Builds Trust

All social media platforms already use artificial intelligence. What’s new is the rise of fully AI-generated platforms entering the market. On these networks, AI isn’t just an add-on – it drives everything, from content creation to feed personalization and moderation. Entire micro-communities can now be generated autonomously, creating fully automated environments that open scalable opportunities for engagement and storytelling.

However, as AI’s role expands, it raises new questions around authenticity, trust, and brand risk. While AI-generated text, images, and videos are inexpensive to produce and sound convincing, they often contain factual inaccuracies. Worse, AI can be used for large-scale manipulation. False information and loss of trust in media become major risks when sources aren’t verified or content isn’t curated. As a result, users are starting to question AI-driven platforms, and this shift is already influencing consumer behavior – and with it, performance marketing strategies. Marco Hochstrasser, CEO at Nexoya, explains: “While the long-term impact of new AI platforms on purchasing behavior remains uncertain, their rise will fundamentally reshape advertising and is likely to drive higher standards for verification, identity, and brand safety.”

As social feeds become flooded with synthetic content, a clear countertrend is emerging: in a world of artificial material, trust becomes the ultimate differentiator. Brands that provide verifiable data, credible attribution, and validated campaign outcomes will stand out. Human-only content feeds, friend-based prioritization, and curated offline experiences are gaining appeal.

Marketers won’t abandon AI automation. Instead, they’ll combine it with community-building, human-centric experiences, hybrid events, and exclusive formats. Budgets will increasingly flow toward platforms that make the “why” behind every change, recommendation, or forecast transparent. Marco Hochstrasser emphasizes: “Transparency is no longer just a compliance requirement – it’s becoming a performance advantage for advertisers.”

Trend 2 – Multimodal Search: From Keywords to Conversations

Search has long since moved beyond text queries in traditional search engines and is now driven by conversational AI assistants. Keyword strategies are losing influence as search results increasingly consist of AI-generated answers. Consumers discover products and brands through voice assistants, visual search, and generative AI interfaces. Search tools are shifting from displaying long lists of links to delivering direct, contextual responses. Social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are also emerging as independent search environments, significantly shaping how users discover products and services.

AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are introducing geo-based insights – search results that reflect intent, location, context, and user scenarios. Advertisers will soon optimize campaigns for moments, local intent, and conversational answers. New geo-intelligent systems will reveal how queries differ by city, market maturity, or competitive landscape.

At the same time, regional inaccuracies in GEO, SEA, and SEO are being resolved. Marco Hochstrasser expects major improvements by 2026: “Search and advertising platforms will gradually provide region-specific insights into user intent, localized attribution, and performance data. Performance teams will finally be able to align budgets with real local impact rather than aggregated averages. Combined with advertising options like the free Perplexity ad placements, this opens new opportunities for performance marketing.”

This evolution demands a fundamental strategic rethink. Advertisers must understand the contexts in which audiences search – from spoken queries on smart devices and image-based discovery moments to AI-generated product summaries. To succeed, brands must adapt their content and creative formats, optimize for emerging search surfaces, and track how generative search affects traffic and conversion paths. Marco Hochstrasser notes: “Marketing teams that start aligning SEO, content strategy, and paid media planning with these new environments now will maintain visibility amid increasingly diverse search behaviors. Agility and cross-channel coordination will be essential to remain visible, relevant, and competitive.”

Trend 3 – Cross-Channel Attribution: The New Era Beyond Cookies

Traditional attribution models are under pressure. Privacy regulations and platform changes are reducing data transparency, usable cookies are disappearing, and publisher-provided data is often biased. For many large advertisers, static triangulation – combining multiple analysis methods and data sources – brings confusion rather than clarity. The emerging standard is regression-based cross-channel attribution, powered by privacy-compliant CRM, e-commerce, and ERP integrations, aggregated data, and statistical modeling. These systems continuously measure the real impact of each channel, campaign type, and even creative concept, based on real budget shifts and incremental effects. Marco Hochstrasser explains: “Advertisers are increasingly skeptical of platform-based measurement tools, citing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency.”

Nexoya resolves the long-standing attribution dilemma by operationalizing regression-based methods in day-to-day marketing. Its monthly statistical modeling uses weekly budget adjustments as ongoing micro-experiments, allowing the model to learn continuously and improve accuracy week by week. As a result, marketing teams gain both robust measurement and actionable, campaign-level budget recommendations that can be reviewed and implemented with a single click.

Further information

Article “A.I.’s Anti-A.I. Marketing Strategy” – The New York Times, November 26, 2025: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/opinion/ais-anti-ai-marketing-strategy.html

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About Nexoya

The marketing analytics company Nexoya Ltd., based in Zurich, Berlin, and Milan, has been providing automated analyses for the digital marketing of medium-sized and large companies since 2018 – in a user-friendly and data protection-compliant manner. Based on machine learning, the SaaS platform “nexoya Marketing Analytics” optimizes multi-channel marketing campaigns: To do this, the solution aggregates key figures from various channels such as Google Ads, Meta, or LinkedIn, presents them clearly, and monitors the key figures. Based on the data collected and using artificial intelligence (predictive analytics), Nexoya then optimizes campaign budgets. The solution thus relieves marketing teams of routine operational tasks, simplifies automated, data-driven decisions, and reduces marketing costs by up to 30 percent. Nexoya only collects non-personalized data, which is stored in certified Swiss data centers. Its customers include well-known companies such as Yuh, Generali, Swisscom, and Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) in Switzerland, Yello Strom, and bike-components in Germany, and Vodafone, Italo, Ita Airways, Facile, and Scholl in Italy. www.nexoya.com

Press contact
Sabrina Ortmann, Nexoya
Phone: +49 30 54909240
E-Mail: press@nexoya.com